Seminar Time: 22/06/2026 10:00-11:00

Title: Nonlinear Dynamics for Engineering Design

Expert: Professor Marian Wiercigroch  (University of Aberdeen )

Expert's Profile: Professor Marian Wiercigroch educated in Poland, US and UK holds a prestigious Sixth Century Chair in Applied Dynamics, and he is a founding director of the internationally renowned Centre for Applied Dynamics Research (CADR) at the University of Aberdeen. His area of research is theoretical and experimental nonlinear dynamics, which he applies to various engineering problems. Wiercigroch has published extensively (over 600 journal and conference papers) and sits on a dozen editorial boards of peer review journals. He is a frequent keynote and plenary speaker at major international conferences and the Editor-In-Chief of International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, a leading journal in mechanics and mechanical engineering. At Aberdeen he leads a large research group as the Director of CADR and in his career have supervised over 150 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. He has hosted over 100 long term academic visitors from all over the world.  He is the inventor of new patented drilling technology called Resonance Enhanced Drilling and the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of a spinoff company iVDynamics Ltd.  He has established in Aberdeen unique experimental laboratories allowing to investigate complex nonlinear dynamic interactions in mechanical systems with the focus on energy generation.  Prof.Marian is a Scottish Champion of Knowledge Exchange (2020) and served as a panelist in the Research Excellence Frameworks (2014, 2021), which assess the quality of research in the UK. He has received many awards and distinctions including a Senior Fulbright Scholarship (1994), Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2009), DSc honoris causa from the Lodz University of Technology (2013), Distinguished Honorary and Guest Professorships from the Perm National Research Polytechnic University (2017), Balseiro Institute (2018), Yanshan University (2021), University of Nottingham Ningbo (2023), Harbin Engineering University (2024), NUAA (2024), and Zhejiang University (2025). In 2025 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and won China Friendship Award from Hebei Province.

Abstract: In this lecture Prof. Marian Wiercigroch painted a broad picture of the nonlinear world and examined implications of this view on science and engineering. Through carefully chosen examples from everyday life, science and engineering Prof. Marian Wiercigroch showed just how nonlinear and dynamic our world really is. In the first part, Prof. Marian Wiercigroch defined nonlinearity and nonlinear dynamics. Specifically Prof. Marian Wiercigroch focused on a class called non-smooth dynamical systems. Then Prof. Marian Wiercigroch showed how such problems can be effectively modelled and analysed by low dimensional dynamical systems . The generic complexity of non-smooth dynamics was demonstrated by an elastic impact oscillator – an archetypal model for the high frequency vibro-impact drilling. The second part was devoted to what we might call Nonlinear Dynamics for Smart Engineering Design where Prof. Marian Wiercigroch presented results from his recent projects, where nonlinear dynamic interactions had been used to enhance the performance of real systems and structures. Prof. Marian Wiercigroch put a special emphasis on one large project from energy industry, where the team developed a revolutionary downhole drilling technology tested in their unique drilling laboratories. Prof. Marian Wiercigroch argued that this would not be possible in a linear and static world!

Thanks to Professor Marian Wiercigroch for the wonderful Seminar!